Public Safety Chief Grilled Over Prior Job, But Wins OK For Reappointment

Republican legislators grilled public safety Commissioner Dora B. Schriro Tuesday over problems in her previous job as head of New York City's prison system — including violent abuses of teenage inmates under her watch — but she still won a legislative committee's approval for four more years as commissioner.

"This is really bad," Republican state Sen. Rob Kane, R-Watertown, told Schriro at her confirmation hearing before the executive and legislative nominations committee. He was referring to a scathing report last August by the U.S. Department of Justice that said young inmates' civil rights were routinely violated from 2011 to 2013 by correction officers' use of excessive force in a "deep-seated culture of violence" at the Rikers Island prison complex.

"I read it last night and I was flabbergasted by it," Kane said.

Schriro left her job as New York City's correction commissioner to accept Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's appointment in January 2014 as commissioner of the state Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, which includes the state police. Malloy's renomination of Schriro requires approval from the state House of Representatives, and Tuesday's committee hearing was the first legislative step toward that.

Although Kane was vocal in his criticism, only House members of the committee could vote when it ended and Schriro was approved 7-3, with all the "no" votes coming from Republicans on the Democrat-controlled committee.

Schriro, who holds a law degree and a doctorate in education but never served as a police officer, calmly defended her four-year tenure in New York, just as she has in recent months when asked by The Courant about the August report and subsequent news stories in the New York Times that raised questions about her actions.

Schriro said she inherited a bad situation in New York and instituted new measures to combat abuses, including adding 2,000 surveillance cameras inside the prisons — a 70 percent increase.

But Kane hammered her with questions about a Times report last September that Schriro used her authority in New York to order that critical comments about two key subordinates — a warden and deputy warden — be removed from a 2012 report on an internal investigation. That report found that hundreds of inmate fights were omitted from correction department statistics, making it appear that Warden William Clemons and Deputy Warden Turhan Gumusdere had dramatically reduced violence in the prison. The edited report, not the original version by internal investigators, was later turned over by city officials to federal investigators.

"How could you accept that type of data when it's untrue?" Kane asked.

Schriro responded that she had immediately corrected the public record concerning the flawed statistics, but had removed a recommendation from the report that Clemons and Gumusdere be demoted because they hadn't had a chance to defend themselves in a disciplinary process. She said she had not handled the Justice Department's request for all relevant city reports and had nothing to do with which version was handed over.

Another Republican member of the nominations committee, Rep. Cecilia Buck-Taylor of New Milford, said she was troubled by Schriro's record in New York and would vote no on her nomination pending any further information that might change her mind by the time the full House takes its yet unscheduled vote on her reappointment.

Buck-Taylor asked Schriro how she would grade herself on her performance in New York. "A for effort," Schriro responded, adding, "As for the rest, I'll let the record speak for itself."

Democrats on the committee, and even one Republican, praised Schriro's first year as Connecticut commissioner, however.

Republican Rep. Janice Giegler of Danbury thanked her for undoing a decision by the previous commissioner to consolidate the state police dispatching operation and close some state police barracks at night. Giegler called it "crucial" that Schriro kept Troop A in Southbury open 24 hours a day.